Rittz - Geronimo

Though Geronimo is best known as "that guy whose name people yell when jumping from really high up," Geronimo actually got his moniker through a misunderstanding, when English settlers overhead Mexican soldiers praying to St. Jerome (“Jeronimo!”) in response to the Chiricahua Apache leader and anticolonial fighter's tenacity in battle. With that semi-unrelated (but interesting, right?) history lesson out of the way, Rittz latest effort finds the Slumerican emcee using the historical figure/exclamation as a springboard for two lyrical portraits of life at the bottom. DJ Burn One mans the boards, delivering a tension-fraught live-band beat as the Georgia repper tells the stories of two individuals chained by poverty, psychological baggage and alcoholism—one of whom bears a striking resemblance to Rittz himself, as portrayed in Nowhere to Run. Heavy stuff, but the artist's own triumphs over adversity suggest that there's hope no matter how low one's fallen. Those digging this outtake can find more fresh, thought-provoking tunes on Rittz and Burn One's White Jesus mixtape, as well as checking out their contribution to DJBooth & PUMA's recent Uncontested EP.